When you wake up at 3:30 a.m. for a job that starts in the pre-dawn hours, lunch arrives
early.

So, on a recent weekday morning at 10:45, Gayle King, a co-host of
CBS This Morning, and Mika Brzezinski, the sparring partner of Joe Scarborough for
Morning Joe on MSNBC, met at a New York hotel to discuss the demands of morning
television, the roles of anchormen and -women, and comedian Russell Brand.

Q: Look at the formula for morning television: a man in the main chair, a smart woman off to his
side and the occasional gay weatherman. When do we get a woman in charge? When do we get a Morning
Mika?

Mika Brzezinski: I don’t want a
Morning Mika. I don’t think that would work. What we have works.

Q: When you come on at 8 a.m., I think: Here’s something more humanizing. Is that just you, or
is it the role that women have to play on morning television?

Gayle King: I definitely don’t feel that. It’s just my personality. I never play a role other
than myself.

Brzezinski: Whoever I am right now is who you see on TV. And that is something I learned from
Gayle 20 years ago. It’s a talent. You either have it or you don’t.

Q: The mood on
CBS This Morning seems to be friendly but professional. There’s a decided absence of fake
fizziness. Was that the decision from the get-go?

King: Well, here’s the thing: Neither Charlie (Rose) nor Norah O’Donnell would engage in that
false kind of TV banter. There’s no obligatory ha-ha-ha. If none of us feels like reacting to
something, we don’t.

Q: I’ve read that it was pretty much a fluke how you and Joe came together. But I sense you’ve
made a career of being super-collegial, right?

Brzezinski: Here’s how I’d put it: I’m drawn to people I don’t understand or agree with. Look, I
have a brother who’s a Republican who worked in the Bush administration, and I wanted to jump him
at dinner conversations during the Iraq war — and another brother who works for Obama. Then there’s
my dad.

Q: The brilliant Zbigniew Brzezinski — national security adviser under President Carter.

Brzezinski: My family finds its way through friction. The whole point of being a Brzezinski is
to embrace someone when you disagree and explore it and grow from it.

King: Without killing each other.

Q: Who pops into your head when I say “best interview”?

King: I’m really proud we got Michelle Obama during our first two weeks.

Brzezinski: I’ll just go with the most recent:... Russell Brand.

Q: When I watched, I thought: I’ll bet this is a last-minute sub and they didn’t give Mika a
prep sheet. How did you not know who Russell Brand was?

King: But you knew who he was.

Brzezinski: Sorry, Gayle, I didn’t. We taped that segment, and we didn’t have to air it. But the
role I play on
Morning Joe is the un-pop-cultured one, and sometimes things happen because I don’t know
who Russell Brand is, and that’s what happened during that interview.